In a rough translation from the french website– it says that they had recently purchased new quickdraws, and that a young girl friend of the climber had improperly attached the carabiners to the dogbone, i.e. had attached the biner only to the plastic ‘anti-flip’ piece instead of the actual dogbone.
8 of the 12 draws that the climber was on before the fall were mounted that way….
I wonder if this means they were rigged as previously discussed here:
On 10/07/2013 Groveller wrote:
>Why would the quick draw be set up like this?
>
Read the original links Grovel.
On 10/07/2013 ajfclark wrote:
>I wonder if they really did put the rubber bands on the bolt end of the quick draw.
Regardless it is up to the user of the gear to know how to use it.
The fact that it was set up wrong and then used while incorrect and assumed to be OK, is two counts of shockingness at an almost criminal level regarding lack of instruction and lack of supervision.
They prolly think that bolts are infallable too.
On 10/07/2013 Groveller wrote:
>Why would the quick draw be set up like this?
It should end up looking like this:
The band should go across the dogbone, down the opposite side of the biner, through, back over the other side of the dogbone, etc. It's actually a bit of a pain to do if the bands are actually tight enough to hold the biner in place.
Another possible explanation is given in this video (you might want to mute and fastforward some of it):
Very sad for the family, all the kids who inevitably watched it happen and everyone involved.
This type of quickdraw should be banned and production methods changed.
I know that climbers often rig slings themselves - but this plastic holder basically masks faulty equipment.
Here's the video about plastic bands on quickdraws from UK Climbing that is far more animated than the one above: http://vimeo.com/29836772
Really sad. Having a look at his website, it looks like he's used this type of draw before, but has also slung some interesting setups that I wouldn't preferentially use. http://www.titotraversa.it/
Can only imagine how the rest of his team would have felt too, seeing it and knowing that they might have carried his gear...
Not sure I saw any craziness I wouldn't use, apart from some of the mono holds and the orange/black beanie:)
On his homepage it has a slideshow; Pic 6/23 shows him lowering(?) with a a few cleaned draws. On the draws you can see the set-up of the draws has the string on the straight biner. Also pic 9/23 shows a similar set up of string on the straight biner...
I don't use strings though have always thought they were to stop the rope end biner moving around, and according to Petzl, protect a high wear area of the draw.
EDIT By string I mean any band around the biner holding it in place, not just the Petzl brand 'string'.
On 11/07/2013 miguel75 wrote:
>Not sure I saw any craziness I wouldn't use, apart from some of the mono
>holds and the orange/black beanie:)
>
What's wrong with orange and black?
Yeah, that's right. I'm talkin' ta you mate!
Heh, heh, heh.
On a serious note;
A tragedy for sure, ... but one that appears was avoidable.
I tend to agree with the comment from higher above;
>Regardless it is up to the user of the gear to know how to use it.
Not much to be said beyond that, and I am sure all involved now sadly know it.
On 11/07/2013 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:
>On 11/07/2013 miguel75 wrote:
>>Not sure I saw any craziness I wouldn't use, apart from some of the mono
>>holds and the orange/black beanie:)
>>
>What's wrong with orange and black?
>
Eh mate, note the portaledge (red package with silver end), and haulbag (blue).
The camping/&food gear (orange & black), is lightweight by comparison!
;-)
On 11/07/2013 miguel75 wrote:
>I don't use strings though have always thought they were to stop the rope end biner moving around, and according to Petzl, protect a high wear area of the draw.
They are. In the comments of the climbingnarc article someone comments that shorter climbers use them that way so they can use the dogbone as a mini stick clip on routes. Someone replies to that pointing out that at least one manufacturer says that's a bad idea.
On 11/07/2013 ajfclark wrote:
>In the comments of the climbingnarc article someone comments
>that shorter climbers use them that way so they can use the dogbone as
>a mini stick clip on routes. Someone replies to that pointing out that
>at least one manufacturer says that's a bad idea.
?
I have never heard of stick-clipping a fixed draw enroute, and can't imagine climbing with a stick-clipper unless on aid.
Sport climbers typically only stick-clip the first draw, and clearly this young fellow was capable of much more than climbing to the first draw.
On 11/07/2013 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:
>?
>I have never heard of stick-clipping a fixed draw enroute, and can't imagine
>climbing with a stick-clipper unless on aid.
>Sport climbers typically only stick-clip the first draw, and clearly this
>young fellow was capable of much more than climbing to the first draw.
It's apparently very common for hard sports routes that you can't get a top rope on. They stick click each draw they can't climb to to "work the route".
On 11/07/2013 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:
>I have never heard of stick-clipping a fixed draw enroute, and can't imagine climbing with a stick-clipper unless on aid.
That's what Nick was up to when that dodgy bolt pulled, wasn't it? While that might seem like the exception rather than the rule, I've heard of a lot of shenanigans going on while working sport routes and loads of methods to get the rope to the top of a route you can't yet climb.
In this instance, I just mean using the dogbone of the draw as a rigid extension (the stick) so they can reach the the next bolt. Given that he's was 12, I would assume he found a lot of bolts reachy.